


Nothing to Lose

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Ficlet, Gen, Internal Monologue, Season 8, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 09:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18635302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Standing before the dragon queen in the Great Hall of Winterfell, Jaime knows he's going to die. All it takes is 6 words from a broken boy.





	Nothing to Lose

He’s going to die.

Right here in the great hall of Winterfell. One of the soldiers who brought him in delighted in telling Jaime about the last trial held in this hall. You can still see the stain of Petyr Baelish’s blood between the stones.

Jaime knew there was a good chance he’d die when he rode north. He thought about disappearing into the Riverlands, running away from the fight. Just the once, but the thought shames him, and Jaime is not a man accustomed to feeling shame.

He won’t lie to the dragon queen, or Sansa Stark, or the dour bastard seated beside them. Jaime warned him long ago that the path he took was for life, and while Daenerys calls him Warden of the North, he’s still a dog on a chain, defending the realm in his black cloak. Jaime doesn’t wear the white anymore, but he feels it, weighing him down. They’re two sides of the same coin, though Jon Snow would not like to hear it.

Contrition won’t help, and he will never apologize for killing the Mad King. He cannot change what’s gone before. All he has left is here, now, and all he can offer is his life. They can take it here or on the battlefield.

Daenerys Targaryen wants him to beg. She looks like Rhaegar, but her eyes burn like her father’s, bright with barely-contained rage and loathing. He won’t give her that. A maimed lion he may be, but Jaime still has his pride. 

No, Daenerys isn’t his downfall. It’s the boy in the chair. “The things we do for love.” And the moment those words left his lips, impassive, from a face so blank it’s unsettling, Jaime was certain he would not see another day.

He knows. He remembers. Bran Stark may not swing the sword, but he will be the instrument of Jaime’s end after all. 

So when the dragon queen asks why he would betray his family, betray his house by joining the fight in the North, Jaime can’t help himself. “This goes beyond loyalty.”

He knows exactly where she is, to his left, with the Stark bannermen. Her pale hair and polished armor caught his eye the moment he entered the hall, a ray of light in the darkness. Black armor, black cloaks, on the Northerners, the Unsullied, the triad at the head table waiting to judge him. A murder of crows mourning a world that has moved on.

And he lets himself look at Brienne, just for a moment, long enough to catch her gaze and see that she understands. He did hear her. He did try to speak to Cersei. And when Cersei would not listen, too entrenched in her game of thrones to understand the long game afoot, Jaime acted.

He turns back to the dragon queen. “This is about survival.” She will be as deaf to him as Cersei was, this much he knows.

And then a chair scrapes behind him, Brienne’s voice lilting out of the darkness, and he prays, for the first time in years, that she hasn’t just doomed herself to die beside him. 


End file.
